Joint Lab on Artificial Intelligence and Computer Vision Established

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Megvii (Face++) yesterday on establishing a joint laboratory on artificial intelligence (AI) and computer vision. The lab will be dedicated to improving people’s living and advance knowledge frontiers through researches in AI and image recognition and analysis, marking a new milestone in the collaboration between HKUST and Megvii.

Artificial Intelligence is an indispensable part to our future development. As a pioneer in computer vision and deep learning, Megvii, commonly known as Face++, possesses world leading hardware technology and algorithm – including “Paying with Face” and “City Skynet” which were widely used in the mainland. Complementing its strength, HKUST also has an internationally recognized profile in computer vision research, in particular its work in object and environment recognition, adding on to HKUST’s competency in robotics and autonomous systems as one of the University’s five research focuses, the two parties are set to create more innovative applications in AI and computer vision.

The memorandum was signed by HKUST President Prof Tony F Chan and Megvii’s Co-founder and chief executive Yin Qi. “As a research university,” President Chan said. “HKUST dedicates to the development of frontier research in order to embrace the opportunities laid ahead of us. Face ++ is a forerunner in artificial intelligence and computer vision, we expect this collaboration will leverage the strength of both parties, namely our research output and their industrial experience, to create even better products and technologies in the aforesaid areas.”

Megvii’s Co-founder and CEO Yin Qi said, “From an academic research team to a commercialized company, I have always sought to balance technical faith and commercial value. The deeper we go into the industry, the more we realize how important scientific research it is, so this year, we set up an academic committee and invited renowned scholars like Andrew Yao Chi-Chih and Nanning Zheng as our consultants. Meanwhile we also hope that we can establish relations with first-class universities such as HKUST, so then, we built the joint laboratory. I think today is a brand new start to both sides, we will regard this as a starting point to our future success in scientific and technological cooperation between HKUST and Megvii.”

Led by Prof Quan Long from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, research topics of the joint lab include AI, computer vision, 3D reconstruction, image analysis, recognition and understanding. The lab aims to develop smarter computer vision technology, bringing together research talents from both sides and integrating the competitive edges from both academia and the industry. The collaboration also covers talent grooming and other incubation and entrepreneurship projects, providing internship and job opportunities for HKUST students.

Prof Quan said, “Through founding this joint lab, we hope to stay at the frontier of AI’s development and help build the brain of a modern city, leveraging not only on our University’s world class research in computer vision, as well as Altizure, a 3D reconstruction company incubated by HKUST, but also on the strong AI commercial platform of Face++.”

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